Time to End the Chemical War Against Superweeds

Have you ever thought about how your favourite picnic spot in the local city park is managed? Or what happens when herbicides are sprayed on the crops that make up your breakfast cereal? The truth is that in both city parks and the intensive agriculture used to produce breakfast cereals, weed killers are used on a massive scale, under the unproven assumption that they are safe. Roundup, one of the most common commercially available herbicides, is marketed by US agrochemical company Monsanto as “safe” for the environment, and for humans – but “deadly for weeds”. Our new report, Herbicide Tolerance and GM Crops written jointly with fellow non-governmental organisation GM Freeze, however, paints a very different picture.

One of the main ingredients of Roundup, as well as several other herbicides, is a chemical known as glyphosate. Numerous studies covered in the report associate exposure to glyphosate with cancer, birth defects and neurological illnesses (including Parkinson’s). Alarmingly, lab testing suggests that glyphosate can cause damage to cells, including human embryo cells. Other studies mentioned in the report indicate that glyphosate may be a gender-bender chemical that interferes with our hormonal balance. Do you still feel like having your picnic and breakfast cereal?

The environmental impacts of glyphosate are not much better with evidence suggesting that the chemical has a damaging impact on our rivers and on the animals that live in them. It also disrupts nutrients in soil, exposing plants (that are not weeds) to disease and could end up contaminating drinking water.

Whether we like it or not, we all receive exposure to herbicides: sometimes from aerial spraying, sometimes through chemical residues in our food and sometimes because of chemical run off from agricultural land that pollutes nearby fields, seas or rivers. Nobody is happy with this situation, as an extensive survey on attitudes to the environment published by the European Commission last week shows that, across the board, Europeans feel they need more information on chemicals and farming.

Of particular worry is the association between glyphosate and the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) herbicide-tolerant crops, known as Roundup-Ready. These crops, so far are mostly grown in the Americas, are genetically engineered to tolerate glyphosate, so that they can survive massive spraying of Roundup to eliminate weeds. However, these weeds are now becoming increasingly resistant to glyphosate-based herbicides like Roundup.

Resistance to glyphosate has now been confirmed in over 20 weed species, with over 100 resistant strains identified, covering nearly 6 million hectares, primarily in Argentina, Brazil and the U.S, where GM Roundup Ready crops are grown. Controlling these glyphosate-resistant weeds has become a major problem for farmers, prompting manufacturers of glyphosate and GM crops like Monsanto to recommend further increases in the deployment and concentration of herbicides - including the use of chemicals that are even more toxic than glyphosate. This escalation in the pesticide ‘arms race’ is creating a vicious circle that is producing a new breed of superweeds.

There are no winners in the war against superweeds - but human health, the environment, farmers and you, the consumer, all the losers. Given the problems identified so far, Greenpeace is demanding a review of the use of glyphosate in the EU and that no glyphosate-tolerant GM crops should be authorised in Europe or elsewhere. With a major reform of European farming policy just underway, governments need to recognise that the industrial agriculture system where GM crops and chemicals thrive is profoundly unsustainable.

Failure to act will threaten food production, jeopardise human lives and put the environment severely at risk. It is time to round up glyphosate for good and embrace ecological farming allowing us to once again enjoy our picnic and breakfast cereal.

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vlp bring more public awareness and urge corporations like Bayer to immediately discontinue sale of these deadly chemicals that are playing a pinnacle...

vlp bring more public awareness and urge corporations like Bayer to immediately discontinue sale of these deadly chemicals that are playing a pinnacle role in the utter decimation of our bees population and stop the obvious repercussions associated this wholesale slaughter.

Point of clarification for all you wack job, neo-hippy, liberals. Roundup is not killing the bees. It and the rest of your evil "poisons" ...

Point of clarification for all you wack job, neo-hippy, liberals. Roundup is not killing the bees. It and the rest of your evil "poisons" are helping increase crop production to a level that allows us to feed the 7 billion humans on this planet. Including you, your family and the families of the people using these "poisons."

If you are as concerned as you pretend to be, try coming up with some solutions to how to feed a population that will be, according to your wonderful UN, 9 billion by 2050. As of right now, without Roundup and its associated chemicals, we would not be able to do that.

Round up is ubiquitous in production agriculture and has not been proven to have caused cancer in anyone at the levels it is used at. Reality is, just about anything you can think of is harmful if too much is consumed, including plane old H2O.

Having just witnessed the horrendous and cruel symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and recent death of my father, I am determined to find information...

Having just witnessed the horrendous and cruel symptoms of Parkinson's Disease and recent death of my father, I am determined to find information as to the causes of this disease. I undertand certain pesticides have been noted , and several diseases including cancer are caused by what we eat. I mean by this, what is done to crops before they are put in the soil and what is sprayed onto them and added to our food. Closer attention should be given to imported fruit and vegetables, especially GM crops, which are probably sold in the UK and used in readymeals.
I would appreciate more information on this please, as people are probably unaware they are eating these
chemically treated , GM produced foods and the consequences to their health a few years down the line.. Our farmers should be supported to use organic methods as chemicals and intensive farming are the reason for climate change .

Would our "modern" health problems be linked to this GMO crop technoligy combined with the use of weedkillers as Round Up now a days and the...

Would our "modern" health problems be linked to this GMO crop technoligy combined with the use of weedkillers as Round Up now a days and the Bt crop, which produces his own chemical insect killer during his productive life?

I'm very unhappy after reading the subset of the article. I'm curious about the effects over insets - among these the bees - birds, snacks an...

I'm very unhappy after reading the subset of the article. I'm curious about the effects over insets - among these the bees - birds, snacks and others who receive, with no chance of defense, the roundup herbicide.